Statements of the National Executive Committee, CPE (ML)

First Published:The Marxist-Leninist, (Internal Discussion journal of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist)) Vol. 1, No. 1, September 1974 Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.

Statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) – August 1st, 1974

At an extraordinary plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) held on July 17th, the Central Committee decided unanimously to endorse the decision taken by the National Executive Committee of the Party on July 10th to suspend Aravindan Balakrishnan from all posts and from membership of the Party. The Central Committee also took appropriate disciplinary action on members of Aravindan Balakrishnan’s small clique.

Aravindan Balakrishnan and his clique were suspended from the Party because of their
pursuance of conspiratorial and splittist activities and because of their spreading social fascist slanders against the Party and the proletarian movement.

The Central Committee regretted that, after 7 years of struggle to unite together in order to strengthen the proletarian revolutionary movement, and especially its proletarian headquarters, Aravindan Balakrishnan had unilaterally and without consultation attempted to destroy all the established unity instead of trying to strengthen it, had set himself up against the proletarian Party and violated all discipline, and had launched an entirely unprovoked and thoroughly unprincipled external attack on the Party.

The Central Committee noted that after several months of internal ideological struggle and disagreement on certain important questions, Aravindan Balakrishnan, suddenly attempted to abort the struggle to clarify differences and forge unity in the Party on the basis of principle and arrogantly and individualistically began to withdraw from his responsibilities to the Party and put himself above discipline, then after several weeks he launched his cowardly attack on the Party as ’fascist’. Through this Aravindan Balakrishnan has done serious harm to the proletariat and the Party.

The Central Committee resolutely opposed Aravindan Balakrishnan’s line of seeking disunity and using ideological differences to divide. This method is not the method of genuine revolutionaries but is used by individualists who refuse to subject themselves to the collective, and refuse to accept the discipline of the Party as the necessary conscious and voluntary discipline in order to serve the proletariat. Not only did Aravindan Balakrishnan seek disunity, but he also tried to conspire to build a clique of people around ’his line’ and establish his centre whilst still claiming to be in the Party, continuously saying one thing to the Party comrades and preaching and practising another to younger comrades and comrades under his ’discipline’.

The Central Committee repudiated the metaphysical logic harmfully promoted by Aravindan Balakrishnan in opposition to dialectical materialism and the concrete analysis of concrete conditions. This was especially manifest in his retrospective examination of history and passing judgements on past activities in such a way as to suggest that today’s conclusions could have been gained without the experience of practice and the successes and pitfalls. Aravindan Balakrishnan through this one sided logic tried to absolve himself from all the policies and decisions he participated in taking, and from the responsibility of summing up the effect of those policies and the way forward from them. At the same time he uses the same logic to condemn the entire Party, its rich experience as well as to condemn the historical process for not unfolding in a different manner. Aravindan Balakrishnan uses this logic to suggest that if we had known yesterday what we know today, then yesterday’s attempts to participate in the real world and move history forward would have been unnecessary. Obviously this logic propounded by Aravindan Balakrishnan is just another form of the idealist theory of knowledge because today’s conclusions have only become possible through the experience gained in the past and could not have been reached any other way. Aravindan Balakrishnan is suggesting that with ’more understanding and with a few dogmas and some quotations from Marxism it would be possible to bypass the arduous struggle of participating in practice to move the world forward, avoid all mistakes and build a conscious and advanced vanguard Party without basing this on leading the revolutionary struggles of the people in practice, and applying Marxism-Leninism to this task.

The Central Committee took account of the main ideological and political lines being pushed by Aravindan Balakrishnan in order to’ justify his position. It is on account of his refusal to change these lines in the past, despite encouragement, that Aravindan Balakrishnan has taken the stand of opposition to revolution. The Central Committee decided to raise all these lines inside the Party for discussion.

Whilst regretting Aravindan Balakrishnan’s departure from Marxism-Leninism, and unilateral withdrawal from sitting together with Marxist-Leninists to sort out contradictions, the Central Committee resolutely agreed that such struggles are inevitable and reflect the decay of the imperialist system and the fierce contradiction between progress and decay, revolution and counter-revolution. The Central Committee also agreed that such struggles are bound to lead to the strengthening and steeling of the Party cadres, and that it is, as comrade Lenin pointed out, only through such a process of purging itself of bad elements that revolution and the revolutionary Party advances to its goal. Aravindan Balakrishnan launched his cowardly and futile attack at a time when the class contradictions in Britain are intensifying rapidly, when national minority workers throughout Britain are launching many vigorous struggles and when the entire proletariat in Britain is astir and launching serious battles against monopoly capital. Furthermore Aravindan Balakrishnan’s attack comes at a time when the Party had forged more unity through struggle, and made certain advances which had prepared it to expand its work in the industrial proletariat as never before.

Coming at such a time Aravind Balakrishnan’s cowardly and unprincipled attack can only be viewed with great contempt and serious lessons drawn from the lines which Aravindan Balakrishnan had been using to oppose the continued advance of the Party. By struggling against these lines which have opposed the twofold task of STRENGTHENING THE UNITY OF MARXIST-LENINISTS and ORGANISING THE PROLETARIAT, it is certain that the entire Party will strengthen its unity on a revolutionary basis and on a higher level, and that the task of organising the industrial proletariat will surge ahead, under the leadership of the Party.

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Statement of the National Executive of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) – July l0th, 1974.

At a meeting of the National Executive of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) held on July 10th, 1974, it was unanimously decided to suspend Ara Balakrishnan from all posts in the Party. That is from his position as a member of the National Executive Committee, from the Central Committee and from his membership of the Party.

The reasons for this decision are as follows:

Ara Balakrishnan has opposed the political line of the Party, that without a revolutionary Party there can be no revolution and that all genuine Marxist-Leninists must strive to build a unified and professional centre, always putting the Party above personal interest. As a consequence of opposing this line over the last few months Balakrishnan has violated and opposed the Party discipline and integrity on a number of occasions.

When confronted about this at a recent meeting between himself and the National Secretary of the Party, he openly gave the theory of exceptionalism, i. e. that he had the right to be an exception to following the Party discipline, and claimed ’justification’ for this anti-Marxist-Leninist position by claiming that “the question had to be raised whether the Party was fascist or communist”, that the National Secretary was a fascist who was preventing the revolution from advancing, and insinuated that all other comrades in the Party were just mindless slaves who ran around at the ’flick of the National Secretary’s finger’. He further claimed to be engaged in the activity of “overthrowing and rebelling against” the Party leadership arid on this basis claimed full right to place himself and his opinions at the centre of things and discard the Party principle.

Following this serious violation of discipline and the theoretical ’justification’ of it by Balakrishnan, his social-fascist attack on the Party and the Party leadership and his self- declared aim of overthrowing the leadership, the National Executive solemnly decided that such an attitude was incompatible with his continued presence in the Communist Party and his claim to be a Marxist-Leninist. The National Executive therefore decided to suspend the comrade from all posts.

The National Executive wish to point out that if Balakrishnan had serious views and differences with the Party and wanted to build the Party to lead the revolutionary movement he would have participated in the internal democratic centralist process in the Party and contributed to strengthening unity and advancing the Party. However he has over several months now avoided this process, has refused to attend certain meetings, has detached himself from the Party and has now declared himself in the pursuit of overthrowing the leadership.

The National Executive warns Ara Balakrishnan that his subjectivist attacks and anti-Party activity will come to no good end. If he persists in his present social-fascist course of attacking the Party as fascist there can be no unity with him. If however he is a genuine Marxist-Leninist with differences with the Party then he will definitely make self-criticism and apply humbly to work within the Party. The National Executive sincerely hopes that Ara Balakrishnan will desist from going against the revolutionary trend and follow this latter course of action. However, should he choose to persist in his present course of action the National Executive will call for his expulsion from the Central Committee and the Party.

The National Executive calls upon all comrades of the Party to pay serious attention to this matter and calls upon all genuine comrades to come forward vigorously to STRENGTHN THE UNITY OF THE GENUINE MARXIST-LENINISTS and to oppose all ideas of disunity, or leaving strengthening unity to chance or considering it as a secondary question. Only by strengthening the unity of the Marxist-Leninists in the proletarian party can the Party solve the problems of providing leadership to the class.

July 10th, 1974

Signed, etc.

* * * *

Letter from the National Executive of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) to Aravindan Balakrishnan

“He who puts his ego against the forces of history will be crushed”

September 2nd 1974

Dear Mr. Balakrishnan,

Enclosed in this envelope you will find a copy of the decision of the National Executive of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) to suspend you from all posts in the Communist Party because of your splittist activity and because of your social-fascist denunciation of the National Secretary of the Party, the Communist Party itself and our founder, close comrade and Chairman of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) and Hindustani Ghadar Party (Marxist-Leninist) , Comrade Hardial Bains, as fascists.

On account of your behaviour on the occasion when our representative visited you to give you this document it was in fact not possible to get you to accept it. This is because of your absolute refusal to discuss with the representative as even any ordinary honest person would do, leave alone someone who calls himself a Marxist-Leninist. Your behaviour on that occasion was, to say the least, anti-Marxist-Leninist and was in fact simply hysterical. In our outburst you cast complete contempt on the attitude of the Communist Party in this country to your splittism and social-fascist comments. As it is clear to all genuine Marxist-Leninists who uphold Chairman Mao’s important thesis: “Practise Marxism, and not revisionism; unite, and don’t split; be open and aboveboard, and don’t intrigue and conspire” that genuine Marxist-Leninists will always sit together and attempt to sort out differences, we are sending you a copy of this document on yourself. If you are a Marxist-Leninist, or even an honest person with any kind of progressive or anti-imperialist views, we know that you will desist from your splittism, retract your social fascist comments and give serious self-criticism to the Communist Party and seriously and in a frank manner put differences upon the table and humbly discuss them.

May we express our utter contempt and class hatred for the miserable and pathetic attempts at rumour mongering and other forms of gutter politics in which you have become engaged. In this era of world revolution, to absolve oneself from all responsibility in terms of building and strengthening the Party and leading the masses, and instead putting oneself on some ’heavenly’ and ’saintly’ cloud and denouncing all who are participating in the class struggle to move the world forward is a criminal activity indeed.

Furthermore, your deliberate slanders of the genuine Marxist-Leninists of England, Ireland and Canada, and your attempts to split and disrupt those who are participating in the revolution can only be seen as despicable and sordid attempts to set the wheel of history backwards. You will not succeed. The people of the world are aroused, the people of Africa, Asia and Latin America. are staging ever more vigorous battles against the two superpowers, the great People’s Republic of China and People’s Republic of Albania are strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat against revisionism, old and modern, and the proletariat in the capitalist heartlands is astir and becoming revolutionised. Our proletarians, the proletarians of Britain of all nationalities, are very much astir and full of class wrath against monopoly capitalism; they are preparing for a final onslaught, and they are not going to let anything stand in their way. This is why revisionism old and new and opportunism, ’armchair-Marxism’ and splittism of all varieties will be wiped off the face of the old earth as the working class, led by the genuine communist Party, the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) brings in the new. This new world, its construction out of the destruction of the old world, can only come about through the steeled cadres who have the class courage to stand up to the tasks of today, in order to achieve the great goals of tomorrow. Those who cannot face up to the necessity to unite and overcome all obstacles today will never be able to bring about this new world, nor will they be able to halt its birth.

Again, if you are a genuine person we shall expect a reply to our statement on the basis outlined. We know that the ’differences’ about which you are ranting and raving are being used by you as a smokescreen for your own designs of disunity. Differences are not causes for splitting and disunity but of building further unity. If you do have any desire for unity and revolution we know that you will respond.

Finally, may we warn you that if you continue on your present course you may expect the same fate that comes to all those who pit themselves against the forces of history. This is an objective law of the world.

Death to revisionism and opportunism ! Death to splittism!
Long live the proletarian socialist revolution!
Long live the proletariat of Britain!
Long live the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist)!
Long live Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought!

Signed, etc.

“Never refuse to do the little things, for from little things are built the big things - this is
one of Lenin’s important behests.” STALIN.

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IMPORTANT NOTE

To date Aravindan Balakrishnan has refused even to accept the National Executive statement on his position and the Central Committee’s letter to him, arrogantly saying he will not accept anything from a “fascist Party”. This shows Aravindan Balakrishnan’s absolute refusal to humble himself, to struggle for unity, to justify his views, and above all shows that he has taken a stand in opposition to proletarian revolution.